Tuesday, 24 November 2015

Operation Save Unova

It's been awhile since I visited my Norns that aren't genetically modified, so when I sat down to play creatures today I thought I might boot up their world. Honestly though, I think I forgot how hard it is to look after ancient (and I'm talking 30+ hours old) Norns. They just don't eat like they used to!

...especially when they're hanging out and refuse to be separated from each other. As you can see from this picture, Coco, Finch and Dubby have decided to party on the raft, which doesn't make it easy to feed them.

As it turned out, though, these three Norns weren't really going to cause me too much trouble in the end—they all had an OK life force, so it wasn't like they were going to drop dead if they didn't eat within the next ten minutes.

But Unova—oh, Unova. She was the one I needed to be concerned about. She simply didn't eat. Her life force had dropped to around 35% and she still wouldn't eat. And of course, she was only going to find a way to make matters even worse. While I took a short break to admire Aladdin as he played some music for me on the drums and harp, Cosmos found Unova and made her bloody pregnant.

I didn't fancy her chances at this point. Especially seeing as I would have to find a way to get Cosmos away from her for there even to be chance that she might eat something.

This called for drastic action. I decided that the other Norns didn't need me to feed them urgently—they could live for awhile yet—so I launched Operation Save Unova. The first thing to do was separate Unova from Cosmos, which was actually a lot easier than I thought it might be.

Operation Save Unova, stage one: complete. From here I just had to get her to actually eat, which proved much more difficult.

It's hard not to feel like giving up. There's only so many times one can say 'push food' before they start to wonder what the whole point in trying is.

But I love Unova, I love all my Norns, even if I accidentally give half of them major genetic defects. So I kept on trying to get her to eat, until this happened:

If you look just behind Unova, you'll spot a little green egg.

I think she looks rather chuffed with what she's done. It must have been a lot of work—she fell asleep right after giving birth. Cute, but not entirely helpful when the thing she really needs is food.

She woke up eventually, and after several minutes of speaking persuasively ('push food' 'push food' 'push food') and, I'll admit, a certain degree of slapping, she was down to 16% life force. By now I was starting to think that she wouldn't ever eat. I wasn't going to give up on her, though; I would stick it out to the bitter end if need be. And then...

I didn't get a picture of the moment itself, but I did capture this image:

All I can say is, HALLELUJAH! I was afraid I would have to write something melodramatic about how her last act was to create a child but she ate so it's all good now. Seriously, look at this darling.

I can happily say that she ate four pieces of cheese following the original one and is now in much better health than those other louts who never eat...